India’s Independence Day hides a deeper contradiction. Every August 15, India celebrates with flags, speeches and pride.
And every August 15, India also confronts a contradiction: a child selling Tricolours at a traffic light while the PM speaks of a Viksit Bharat from the Red Fort.
Writer Sumit Samos captures this tension in his essay “India between the Tricolour and traffic light”. He argues that Independence Day forces a question: are we truly free?
The data is split. One side points to poverty, inequality and exclusion. The other points to rising incomes, welfare schemes and social mobility. Samos says both narratives are true, but incomplete.
From fieldwork in southern Odisha, he found Dalit and Adivasi communities who no longer fear starvation because of regular rations. For someone who has known hunger, that is freedom. Yet the same communities still face moneylenders, displacement, and caste-based barriers.
“The state could be both a source of opportunity and an instrument of dispossession,” he writes. In Rajasthan, Dalits are denied justice through legal delays. In Tamil Nadu, others use the SC/ST Act to challenge caste power.
Migration tells a similar story. Dalit laborers from Bihar working in Tamil Nadu live with insecure jobs. But some who moved to Kerala earn enough to build homes and send children to school.
Politics reflects the same duality. In the 2024 elections, Hindutva politics tried to mobilize Dalit voters in UP around the Ram Mandir. Yet many Dalit voters moved away, fearing attacks on reservation and the Constitution.
Samos cites Ambedkar: voting alone cannot guarantee democracy in a society with deep historical inequalities. Freedom for marginalized families often means concrete things — food, a hostel, education, a house, protection under law.
“August 15 need not force us to choose between these stories,” he writes. Freedom was not delivered in 1947 alone. For millions, it is still being made, negotiated and fought for in everyday life.
That may be the more complicated story of independent India. But it may also be the more truthful one.